Palace remains in Mexico point to ancient rise of centralized power

ROYAL DIGS An aerial view shows an excavated section of a ruler’s palace in southern Mexico that dates to as early as 2,300 years ago. This structure contained areas for conducting government business. The ruler’s living quarters, above and to the right of the exposed area, were filled in with dirt after being excavated.

E.M. Redmond and C.S. Spencer

Remnants of a royal palace in southern Mexico, dating to between around 2,300 and 2,100 years ago, come from what must have been one of the Americas’ earliest large, centralized governments, researchers say.

Excavations completed in 2014 at El Palenque uncovered a palace with separate areas where a ruler conducted affairs of state and lived with his family, say archaeologists Elsa Redmond and Charles Spencer, both of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Only a ruler of a bureaucratic state could have directed construction of this all-purpose seat of power, the investigators conclude the week of March 27 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The royal palace, the oldest such structure in the Valley of Oaxaca, covered as many as 2,790 square meters, roughly half the floor area of the White House. A central staircase connected to an inner courtyard that

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